TWW 1 vs TWW 3: a nostalgia trip & difficulty discussion

[rufustfirefly42]

With the amount of bugs as of 3.0 in TWW 3, especially the ones affecting performance, I went back to simpler times, straight to the first game in the series, while they fix the new one.

I hadn’t played TWW1 and thought I never would. But surprisingly, it doesn’t feel older, just different. Some things it did better than the actual iteration. And it’s a smaller, more intimate experience. And much more difficult. To the point that I think it was a good idea to get to it after 1500 hours in the last 2 games of the trilogy. A breath of fresh air. Also hunting for achievements for game 1 races is very satisfying (i’m that kind of person, yes)

I was amazed to realize that the core experience is exactly the same. While all the features introduced meanwhile and that are found in TWW3 make the game not as much a different experience, but a way easier one. I finished a VH vlad&isabella campaign. So let’s take a trip to the year 2016 and see what the state of the vampire counts was when Trump was still campaigning for presidency and Stellaris had 200 less DLCs.

GENERAL STUFF:
- no climate (green/yellow/red) mechanic. You could only take settlements that were later designed as “green”. The others you could only sack/raze.
- lord and hero level cap at 30. Later games increased lvl cap while not significantly made the skills less impactful = stronger
- heroes hard capped at 10 for each type. So no vampire doomstacks for isabella.
- no immortal trait. Heroes in armies would always be permanently killed while lords would always get wounded.
- no LL defeat traits
- weird skill trees for heroes which i still don’t understand. But i think it made their army effects (replenishment, training etc) much less efficient. You had to invest lots of skill points to unlock those army effects that later came by default
- allies were a liability, getting suddenly braindead once you got to at leas a defensive alliance. Also, no allied recruitment
- public order went down much faster
- higher battle difficulties gave huge buffs to melee for the AI, making melee troops for the player very inefficient. Which hit the vampire counts hardest of all.
- no settlement trading
-supply lines much more expensive

VAMPIRE COUNTS SPECIFIC STUFF
- no blood kisses mechanic
- corruption went up and down slower
- skill tree less impactful (no 0 upkeep skellies. It think the upkeep reduction was 25%)
- not sure, but wind of death didn’t seem that powerful
- your main enemy, Reikland, has karl franz, volkmar and balthazar almost from the start within the faction
- among the geopolitical situation relevant to your area of expansion, there was no drycha, no clan moulder, no festus, azazel. Also no kislev.

So that was what I noticed as different. Except for the lack of Kislev factions, everything listed made the game harder. But still incredibly fun. Did I miss anything?

Oh, and visually i like how corruption looked much better. And also the general look of the campaign map felt more realistic to me, to the point that it feels an upgrade over TWW3, not the other way around. I understand that they went for readability for the TWW3 map, but i’m sure they could have done it without changing the entire art style. Especially since it doesn’t come with an improvement in performance, as one would expect from making stuff look cleaner.

One last thing: every race had an awesome, cgi rendered, intro video, not the hand-drawn slideshows from the last two games.

I’m not one of those haters you see arund here, but seeing how the trilogy progressed from game 1 to game 3, it really does feel like the first was made by a big studio whereas the third is being developed by a small indie team.
They went from quality cinematics, realistic graphics, less bugs etc. to cheaper videos, mobile game look, dlcs without achievements and huge bugs that are left unadressed for long periods of time.

PS: still my favorite series :)

[SBA77]

Quite the coincidence that you mention going back to TWW1. I was going to use it in my experiments with transferring games and save files between computers and thus installed it on my old PC relatively recently. Too bad it doesn't launch on my old PC for whatever reason.

[Basarab Laiota]

since you brought up donald trump dont be surprised when the thread devolves into political poopflinging

[chickabumpbump]

Its almost like they made less effort with the game and just made DLC's

[rufustfirefly42]

Originally posted by Basarab Laiota:

since you brought up donald trump dont be surprised when the thread devolves into political poopflinging

:)) I was actively aware of this, that’s why I mentioned him for context while holding back any temptation of expressing opinions/doing jokes.

[TamoDogo]

Originally posted by Basarab Laiota:

since you brought up donald trump dont be surprised when the thread devolves into political poopflinging

*cracks keyboard warrior fingies*

[Jerroser]

The whole regional occupation system definitely was a unique approach that kinda worked in the first game where the scale was tighter and there was a much clearer binary nature between the cites in the plains and the underground holds in the mountains/badlands.

But would argue that it doesn't really work in the current iteration of the game we have for IE such a massive number of faction combinations and climates. Even here a lot of the climate suitability for various races feel somewhat arbitrary and are clearly influenced more by gameplay than intuition. (Which can also be said of the regional occupation system as well)

[Captain Baldy]

I loved WH1 because I was always playing it usually as a chaos nub, a festering plaguelord or Skaven bad boi, and TW2 was just as addictive. Now I'm playing WH3 I barely remember the first two games. I went to play the vortex campaign for example and wondered for ages why I couldn't so went into troubleshooting mode, restarting the game over and over, checking mods and then I remembered vortex was a campaign for WH2

I frikken love this game.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2968272178

[carried by devs]

i return to wh2 and it is more fun

[Shellbie]

The only thing I don't like about wh1 is the almost lack of music.

[rufustfirefly42]

Seeing as the TWW trilogy is progressing, I keep wondering whether it’s one of 2 things that’s happening:

1. The game has become the hugest game that i know of in terms of content. From a dev standpoint, that must mean a lot of moving parts, a lot of things to take into account, a lot of things that can go wrong butterfly effect style. So the huge amount of bugs and oversights are unavoidable even with the most amount of work put in and the best faith. They are doing all they can and we underestimate the amount of work making IE functional requires.

2. They went from what was obviously a labor of love to the business model that seems more and more frequent these days: maximize profits/ minimize cost and effort. Release the game/dlc asap to please investors, fix later.

I like to think it’s mostly the first version, but there are definitely things that hint towards the second. Like when the game was released with some research techs that gave units abilities that they already had. Or the release of the chaos dwarves DLC without achievements, while taking the time to create some for the minor game mode released with intel partnership.

Anyway, I would like to see some reasonable opinions on this. From what i saw here, most users are either haters on duty or fanboys finding excuses for CA. I have 0 knowledge of how a gaming company works (or should work) so I’m really curious what’s happening behind CA’s closed doors in the given context

[stun]

Originally posted by rufustfirefly42:

I’m not one of those haters you see arund here

I am

That said, almost everything you've mentioned (not settlement trading, not some of the factions. WH2 rework undead had better magic and better techtrees than post-patch WH3 VC) was a change from WH1 to WH2+DLC/patches. WH2 was the easiest game in the series by a country mile, and introduced the trend of intentionally overpowered DLCs and generally taking away chances for the player to get screwed. WH3 release totally bucked that trend. Release RoC was a real game with real difficulty again. Of course, people whined and the patches and the WoC dlc are faceroll easymodo again.

[Human bean]

Apropos nostalgia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqhOVY58zIo